


Hairline Fractures

by ashkazora



Series: Ashka's Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Bleeding Through Bandages, Dubious Ethics, Forced Hospitalisation, Gen, Hospitalization, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Restraints, Self-Harm, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23712571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkazora/pseuds/ashkazora
Summary: The Blue Lion didn’t exist,they said,you never left Earthandit's all in your head.Lance had screamed and cried and begged the doctors to let him out. He could feel Blue’s bond in his mind, he could remember all of the wild and wacky misadventures that he had been on. He wasn’t lying! It was real.-In which drastic measures are taken, and Lance goes too far.
Series: Ashka's Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1674655
Comments: 11
Kudos: 51





	Hairline Fractures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnchoredTether](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnchoredTether/gifts).



> alt. title: Lance pulls a Yuri and goes a bit Doki Doki
> 
> BTHB prompt request for AnchoredTether: bleeding through bandages! This one was a hard one to write. I didn't realise it was 5k until I was editing this lol.
> 
> Please tell me if there's anything I've forgotten to tag. I've tried to tag all potential triggers but if you feel like I'm missing something, please tell me.
> 
> **Trigger warnings:** self-harm, forced hospitalisation, non-consensual drug use.

When Lance woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he couldn’t move his arms.

The second thing he noticed was that everything around him was white.

His head felt heavier than lead, his mouth dry and tasting of cotton. He was laying down on the ground, maybe? It was hard to tell if it is the ground or not - the material underneath him was padded and fairly comfortable. Blinking the remnants of sleep out of his eyes, Lance gazed at his surroundings.

He can feel the ground beneath him, and the walls around him. Its cushioned, soft, and ever so _white._ Blinding alabaster on a cold day. Ground bones and untouched sclera. 

The latter half of pills.

His mind felt foggy, memories passing through his fingers like smoke from a fire. The small little capsules they give him - one blue, and one yellow - do funny things to his head. They make Lance feel drowsy, forgetful, like he’s a mere whisper lost in the harsh zephyrs of reality. 

How long had he been in this padded room? How long was it since he’d seen out of the meagre square meters he had been given as a place to call home. There was a cot in a corner, a bathroom that was always locked except for three times a day, but nothing that was truly _his_.

Lance vaguely remembered the first couple of days after he arrived; the pills tended to put a damper on his memories. In and out of a drug-induced haze, he could remember the panic, the desperation as he begged someone, _anyone_ , to let him out. It was no surprise they started giving him sedatives soon afterwards. 

The doctors, all dressed in clean white lab coats with latex-clad hands, explained to him through his fits of rage why he was there.

Delusions. 

His life was _real,_ until it wasn’t. No one else in his family had any sort of mental illnesses, so no one could have seen it coming. According to the people who treated him, it was at the Galaxy garrison when his mind started to deteriorate. Artificial memories of his presumed to be dead hero crashing into Earth on an alien spacecraft, of great beasts forged in stars and the leonine grace of a lion, of adventures through galaxies and wars against might empires of evil. All false. 

_The Blue Lion didn’t exist_ , they said, _you never left Earth_ and _Alteans don't exist._

Lance had screamed and cried and _begged_ the doctors to let him out. He could _feel_ Blue’s bond in his head, he could _remember_ all of the wild and wacky misadventures that he had been on. He wasn’t lying! It was _real._

They nodded, ruffling his hair like he was some sort of _pet_ and told him that _of course, it was real,_ but only in his mind. Lance was suffering from delusions that had to be corrected. Before he could attempt to escape, they shoved pills down his throat and syringes into his arms.

And now he was awake to face another day, arms restrained across himself in some sort of jacket, wearing nothing but a pair of white pants and a pastel blue hospital band around his wrist. 

The days blur into each other, now that he’s drugged up most of the time. Lance can’t tell night from day, the only semblance of the passage of time is the enforced bathroom breaks twice a day, the meals three times a day, and the mandatory therapy sessions that don’t seem to have any routine.

_Ha_ , therapy sessions. What a joke. They take him to another room - the only time he’s ever allowed outside of his padded cage - and try to coax words from his mouth. Lance didn’t know why they wanted him to talk about his delusions, nor why his dreams were of any importance. There was only ever one woman who joined him during these sessions, a serious, professional doctor with dark hair, stern eyes, and a malice Lance swore was there, yet was probably as fake as his dreams of jumping in front of a bomb to save someone.

The more days he spent in this place, the more capsules he consumes, the farther Lance falls into his own mind. 

Lance doesn’t know if he could pull himself up again.

In front of him, a section of the wall swings open, revealing two figures standing in the doorway. It’s useless charging past them, Lance had tried before. It never ended well. 

He recognised them both. They’re both unusually tall, easily dwarfing his six-foot frame. The one with the black hair that almost seemed purple in the harsh fluorescent light (Lance was sure the doctor said his name once, but the pill’s haze affected any memory he had of this), stepped forward, holding a semi-translucent black plastic box. He - well, Lance _thought_ the doctor was a dude - always came in to administer his daily nutrition and medication, though the box was new. There was also usually a guard accompanying the doctor, lest Lance freaked out or had another episode and attacked either himself or the doctors. As the second figure, a more feminine face wearing a security vest instead of the normal white lab came into view, he shivered as his eyes drifted to the taser at the guard's side.

At the start of his treatment, Lance used to tell bad jokes or jest around with anyone that dared to set a foot in his room. The drugs soon stopped that. 

Kneeling down to face Lance’s still-collapsed body on the floor, the doctor opened the box. Inside, the usual bowl of bland, tasteless porridge-like substance lays, accompanied by a silicone spoon and three pills; two blue, and one-half yellow, half white. He gulped at the sight of them. It’s the yellow one that he hated the most, the dizziness and numbing sensation that came as side effects made him feel mindless and hollow. The worst part of mealtimes was when the doctors had to feed him, sometimes forcefully jamming spoons of tasteless goo in his mouth. Those days when Lance couldn’t find the energy to eat were the hardest. 

Once upon a time, Lance refused to take the pills. In retaliation, they gripped his nose and suffocated him until he was forced to take a breath of air, and repeated that motion so that he swallowed. One day, he had even tried to refuse a meal, but when they strapped him to his cot and shoved a tube down his throat did he finally realise that resistance was futile.

“Congratulations, Lance,” the doctor said, pronouncing his name in a guttural, throaty way, “you’ve been incredibly calm this past week, and not once have you had any sort of outburst.”

Lance nodded listlessly, only really half-following their words. He hated the way the doctor spoke to him, deep, slow, patronising in a way that _should_ have sparked a memory in him, but didn’t. His hands twitched in the straightjacket, reminding him exactly _why_ he had been so complacent. The thing that stood out to him the most was the doctor’s words of time. _It’s been more than a week since he arrived._

“As a reward for your good behaviour, the facility has decided to finally grant you upper body mobility,” when a surprised reaction was finally roused from Lance, the doctor stared at him with a stern expression, “however, any sort of outbursts and you’ll end up right back in the jacket. _Understood?”_

Lance nodded again. It had been too long since he could move his arms or hands, yet he couldn’t find it within himself to feel anything more than a feeble sense of relief.

He didn’t protest as the guard walked over and gripped his upper torso, manhandling him into a seated position. Slowly, the clasps at the back of the jacked were released one by one. As the last one clicked open, the guard unravelled the gauzy fabric around his body, carefully taking the restraints off of Lance’s body. Once it was finally removed, Lance let his arms fall to the sides of his body. His limbs tingled at the sudden use.

Waiting expectantly for the doctor to feed him, Lance grew more and more restless and they did nothing but observe him. He tilted his head, unsure what they were waiting for. He didn’t get it. Why weren’t they going anything? 

Though the answer came just a few seconds later, when the doctor placed a beside Lance, nudging the box so that it was right in front of him. 

_Oh._

They expected Lance to feed himself.

Unease prickling at his skin, Lance tentatively grasped the spoon, digging it into the squishy bowl of food. Lance’s arm moved shakily, barely supporting the weight of the spoon _and_ the added nourishment. He held the spoon unsteadily in the air, letting it fall down a couple centimetres every so often before his muscle memory kicked in, and he could finally bring it towards his mouth. Lance let his tongue curl around the silicone, and closed his eyes.

The first bite was always the hardest. The food, or _food goo,_ as Lance had taken to calling it, was something packed with vitamins and nutrients, but tasted like cardboard and had a disgusting gelatinous texture. It wasn’t quite the cuisine he was used to, _but he had spent many months in space getting used to-_

He was wrong. They told him he had never been to space. They told him that it was all in his head, misfiring neurons and chemical imbalances causing grand delusions.

“Are you not hungry, Lance?”

The doctor’s words jolted him from his thoughts. Lance didn’t realise that he was so caught up in his mind that he had forgotten to eat. Hastily swallowing the rest of the foul goo, he shook his head dutifully, refusing to look the doctor in the eye. Hovering in his peripheral vision, Lance could feel the guard’s figure become ever-increasingly present. 

Tension settled in the heavily filtered air, yet the doctor was quick to cut it with a sigh, sounding disappointed and displeased with the one breath. 

Dulled fear rose within Lance. _No,_ he couldn’t disappoint them. He didn’t want to end back in the jacket or forced again to have feeding tubes thrust down his throat. In distressed fumbling, he drove the spoon back into the bowl of food goo, forcing himself to eat it. Who cared if it ended up coming back up again later? They never scolded him when he couldn’t keep his food down.

Once Lance had finished most of the bowl, he saw the doctor looked at him expectantly. Repressing a shiver, he took the three pills in his outstretched, wavering hand, and swallowed them dry. Slowly, the tension in his muscles relaxed, and Lance slumped over slightly as his eyes grew glassy.

All of the lingering thoughts about food goo that was green instead of an off-white faded into a cacophony of meaningless noise that buzzed in the background. Static blurred in Lance’s head until he was once again placed into a pool of numbness. His thoughts were no longer disjointed, but a series of one-word lines that faded off into the far distance of his mind.

He almost didn’t notice the guard wrapping her hands around his torso and dragged him up into a standing position. Lance awkwardly stumbled over his feet as the guard slowly, carefully, led him out of the room and into another one opposite of it. The walk was barely a couple of meters, but to him, it felt like forever. 

The door opened (did someone open it? Lance couldn’t tell), greeting Lance with the sight of his therapy room. Even smaller than the box where he slept, every wall, floor, or roof was padded white with something a little less spongey than his room. Instead of bright LED lights, a harsh purple glow accented vertices and the seams of the padding. The only thing in the room was a reflective metal table, and two uncomfortable-looking chairs of similar material at opposite ends. One of them was already occupied. 

Manhandling him into the remaining chair, Lance didn’t offer any resistance as two cushioned handcuffs were snapped over each of his hands, bolting him to the chair. _That was new._ Tilting his lolling head, the boy tried to gaze at the figure opposite him.

It was her, the doctor who appeared to be in charge. Clipboard and pen beside her, as always. She seemed sterner than the other doctors, sitting rigid and militaristically with an importance that no one else quite had. The only one ever allowed in his therapy sessions, she conducted the most boring sessions Lance had in the hospital. Just like the other doctors, he didn’t remember her name. 

“Good morning, Lance,” she said, her voice tinged with a slight rasp, “how are you today?”

Lance stared past her, mute as always. 

“The other doctors have informed me that you’re finally behaving well enough to be out of that pesky safety jacket.”   


  
Lance nodded inattentively, still stuck in a haze. Undeterred by his silence, the doctor continued as if he had answered.

“Your recovery rate is phenomenal. If you continue to comply and are safe enough, you might be able to go outside again.” She paused, her eyes quickly flashing to her clipboard. “Your family still haven’t called yet. We’ll let you know as soon as they do.”

He didn’t want to go outside. All Lance wanted was to see his family. They _knew_ that - he had shouted it multiple times before they drugged him. But why didn’t they let him see his family? They said it might trigger a psychotic attack, but surely his family would try anything just to see him? They didn’t even visit once. 

For the next whoever knows how long, she gives him question after questing on how he feels and dumb things like his appetite; the usual therapy bullshit. It’s only once Lance didn’t answer any of the standard questions, did she move onto the ones about his delusions.

“Have you had any more dreams?”

Some of the white noise had gradually tapered off in his head, yet Lance had difficulty focusing on her words. _Dreams._ He used to have a lot of them. At first, they were of him flying in Earth’s most technologically advanced planes, soaring towards the stars and floating amongst the cosmos. Then once he got there, he had dreams of fire burning against his back and being trapped in a translucent metal pod and- 

_“Lance?”_

He shook his head.

The doctor hummed, writing something down on the clipboard. Lance stared past her absentmindedly, listening to the scratches of the pen against paper.

Everything around him was bland, with the floor and walls decorated a cream colour with purple fluorescent lights. The particular shade of brilliant indigo surrounded Lance with a feeling akin to warmth; of determination and flames and ferocity that could only be described as non-human. Insecurity and anger that he would never measure up, familiarity and companionship that could only be gained through many adventures and experiences together. Dark raven hair and the sharpness of a sword. 

“What about your friends?” The doctor said, her voice clinical and cold as always. “Last time you were here, you told me you were starting to remember things about your old school.”

She was wrong. He couldn’t recall a thing about the Galaxy Garrison after he began to experience hallucinations. Lance stared back at her, his body catatonic towards any stimulus. 

Her eyes, Lance had just noticed, were a brilliant shade of gold. Metallic and connective with a slice of purple in the pupils that seemed regal, familiar yet foreign in at the same time. Shouldn’t they be pink? The gold looked so _wrong,_ the colour too harsh and warm for him to find comfort in. 

_Blue._ That was a better colour. Blue and pink. Pink and blue. The colours of royalty, of perseverance and strength, of alluring hues and malleable strength. Lance liked blue. He liked Blue. She, the colour, was comfort and stability, a trust built within leonine claws and gleaming steel. 

Red-hot pangs of longing shot through Lance like lightning. He missed them; something, someone who wasn’t real.

Colours danced in his vision, Lance’s head reeling from an influx of emotions. 

He yearned for those tepid touches of electric-like hunger, insatiable for nothing but knowledge. Curiosity shaped as vines, curling around anything that be could be devoured for an inkling of wisdom. Emeralds and jades; moss and ferns; the colour reminded him of a home away from home, a sibling bond between found family but not at the same time. A growth of warm embraces and familiar fun, electric jokes and hidden identity. 

The dissonance of all the hues and shades was jarring. The yellows, _nurturingfriendlysupporting_ , the blacks, _strongleaderhero_ , the pinks, _gracepowerresilience_ , all clamoured in his train of thought, vying for a recognition they wouldn’t receive. Somewhere along the way, Lance tuned out the doctor’s words completely.

“That’s all for today, Lance.” 

The doctor’s voice brought him back to reality, knocking him out of his colourful discordance. _Finally_ , after way too long, the ‘therapy’ session was over. Lance never spoke during these; he didn’t know why the doctor expected him to. 

“I’ll see you soon, Lance. Have a good day.”

As soon as she said that the entrance flung open, bright light flooding in. A different guard stood in the doorway, sauntering over to him with a blank expression on their face. 

Uncuffing his hands from the chair, the guard pulled Lance up and started to guide him out the door. Lance turned back to give the doctor one final glance, and felt a fear trickle down his back as she watched him with a cold, familiar smile. Before he could stare at her longer, he was pushed by the guard out of the room and escorted down the hall back to his cot. Lance thought that would be it for the day but when a doorway opened at the end of his room, he felt only dulled annoyance. 

Stepping into the room, Lance was greeted by the sight of something that wasn’t padded surfaces. Polished white tiles decorated the floors and wall, interspaced by a bare plaster square that used to have a mirror on it until Lance had smashed it, and a small aperture on the roof that probably acted as ventilation for the shower in the far left of the room. The vents always smelled slightly saccharine, circulating cool air while also regulating heat. Of course, Lance wasn’t alone. An attendant - someone dressed exactly like the doctors but in blue - stood passively in the corner of the room.   


  
The shower was nothing special - a small, white-tiled box with see-through doors and a showerhead that was installed in the roof so he couldn’t have something to hang himself on. 

It used to be a lot grander, a lot less sterile and smooth, but Lance had tried to break the piping from the showerhead in his first couple days there, so they quickly renovated it so that nothing could be used to harm others. Or himself. 

Once the door closed behind him, locking himself and an attending doctor inside (the guard waited outside), he was given a small nod from the doctor, a silent _‘you know the drill.’_

And he did.

With newfound dexterity in his arms, Lance manoeuvred the paper-thin shirt over his body, tossing the discarded garment onto the floor. Next was his pants - full-length and made with the same flimsy material as his shirt. Easy to cut through, but too soft to support his weight. The only thing left was his boxers. Coloured a soft azure, they used to have some sort of repeated decal on them, but those embellishments had been worn away from long periods of use. Stark naked, goosebumps formed up and down his arms as the bathroom’s cold air begun to seep into his skin. 

They must have given him a lower dose of the medication if his limbs were beginning to respond only hours after his meal. 

Lance still had difficulty undressing but revelled in the fact that he _could_ undress himself. Phantom touches on his thighs and arms lingered like ghosts, never completely fading away. Standing in the white-tiled bathroom naked as the day he was born in front of a nameless doctor should have been embarrassing, but the mind-numbing concoction of antipsychotics and exposure therapy didn’t let him bat an eye at the voyeur. 

Cautiously, as to not move his body in a way that would destabilise the fragile equilibrium of his balance, Lance left the pile of clothes on the ground and lifted a leg, slowly edging into the shower. Without a curtain or some sort of barrier save for the translucent plastic door, he had no real privacy from the doctor’s watchful eyes. Luckily, Lance realised that on the off-chance they allowed him to have hot water, the steam from the shower would give him at least a little bit of personal space. 

When his whole body was underneath the showerhead, Lance turned on the tap and gasped as hot water immediately rained down onto his bare skin. Some days, no, most days, there wouldn’t be any hot water at all, just a spattering of something barely lukewarm. And that was if he was even allowed a shower at all — in the straightjacket, Lance was only subject to humiliating sponge baths or simply nothing at all. 

Something slimy crawled across Lance’s cheek - he ignored it, just like he ignored the heavy voice in his head. _It isn’t real,_ Earthen face masks never felt like that. As the grease washed from his unkempt shaggy hair, he zoned out listening to the background noise of falling water. 

Sometimes, Lance held a sort of dislike to how numb he had become to most things. Here he was, god knows where locked away from his friends (but did they even exist?) and family (do they care that he’s sick?) and limited to three small rooms. Lance _knew_ that there was something _beyond_ , a piece of the puzzle that was just out of reach. Like a needle in a haystack, all he could do was grasp at the straws of his mind and hope, _pray_ , that something pierced his fingertips. 

Lost in thoughts, Lance didn’t realise his body was swaying until he lurched backwards, rolling off the heels of his feet. His breath caught in his throat. For a few harrowing moments, Lance felt nothing but fear.

A sharp _crack_ echoed throughout the bathroom as Lance’s head bounced off of the tiled floors. For a moment he was frozen, paralysed by the pain, and then-

** Paladin… **

_No... It couldn’t be…_

But it was. A familiar presence flooded his mind, breaking past the drug-induced barriers.

_ Blue! _

She was here! His Lion, his trusty beast. Lance _knew_ he wasn’t crazy. Everything that he had remembered - Allura and Coran, Voltron, his adventures in space - were real! Then why…

Why was he _here?_

As the pain on his head faded, so did Blue’s presence. Lance could feel her digging her metaphorical claws into him, trying to stay with him, to no avail. Slowly but surely, the salty-sweet oceans and birdsong that Lance associated with her disappeared fully, leaving him with a pounding head. 

“Lance?” The attendant rushed into the shower space, looking him up and down with muted concern. Lance blushed faintly as his full front-body body was on full display. “Is everything okay?”

He nodded, painfully prying his body off of the floor. Where his head landed, he noted, the tile cracked slightly. _That couldn’t be good._

Smiling almost fondly, the attendant helped him back up. “Poor thing, must’ve slipped. We’ll get your head checked out after your shower.” With that, they turned away, leaving Lance with his thoughts.

Why did the blue lion suddenly communicate with him? And why now, when he had just fallen? Did something happen to his head?

_Wait a minute…_

In a flash, Lance’s eyes widened as red strings connected his thoughts

_That was it!_

Falling down, the pain must have triggered something in his mind! Every single second of the day in the institution was Lance coddled and protected, prevented from doing even the slightest modicum of harm towards himself. The padded windows, the restrictive straightjacket, it was all an attempt to stop him from reconnection with the Blue Lion!

An urge, a craving, itched underneath Lance skin. 

He _needed_ Blue.

Needed to hear her voice again.

She was _real_. He wasn’t delusional. He wasn’t crazy. 

When Lance fell down, he _felt_ her in the back of his mind. The pain _caused_ that.

_Maybe..._

Carefully, as to not alert the doctor to his plans, Lance turned the shower handle, cranking up the temperature to the maximum. Even when scalding-hot water hit his back, Lance didn’t flinch. Almost instantly, the plastic partition fogged up entirely, blocking what little visibility the steam didn’t yet offer. 

_This is it._

He could do this. 

Anticipation knocked the breath from his lungs. With shaking legs, Lance slowly crouched down, outstretching his arm to that the loose panel of tile was just in his reach. Digging his slender fingers into the cracked edge, he slowly pried away a large, five-inch shard from the wall. Behind it, small plaster shards crumbled from its bearings, crackling to the ground. 

_Fuck._

Lance froze. 

Clutching the jagged shard, torturous moments passed as he waited for the doctor to make some sort of move, to check that he was okay.

_But no one came._

He tried to steady his breathing, hold in his sigh of relief. Either the attending doctor was deaf, or simply didn’t care. 

_Okay, Lance, you can do this_ , he thought to himself. Just like the shower water around him, Lance felt the drugs in his system slowly swirl down the metaphorical drain. This was the best- the only time he would have to do this. He would do _anything_ for Blue.

For the first time in forever, Lance felt _alive._

Gripping the porcelain shard tighter, he brought its jagged edge down again to his wrist. In one slow, shaky motion, he dug it into his skin. 

The first cut was explorative, Lance testing the waters to see how much force he would have to apply before his skin broke. When a thing, barely bleeding line about five centimetres wide was drawn, he lifted the porcelain shard and started again, a little deeper and harder. And then again, and again.

Lance’s breaths quickened as more blood welled up from the wound. He couldn’t stop. The pain was intoxicating. It felt…

It felt _fantastic_. 

Blood washed from his wrist down the drain, crimson splatters desecrating the loyally-upheld white colour scheme. But that didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that he cared about was the tally marks carved into his once-unblemished skin, deep and methodical and gushing with more agony than Lance had experienced since coming there.

And then, there was a spark. Not from the cuts, but inside his head.

For the first time in a very long time, he felt _it._ Her presence.

_ Blue? _

** I'm here, my Paladin. **

It was faint, tentative and wary, but she was there in the back of her mind. Emotions rushed through his mind like a waterfall; wariness, confusion, joy, then fear. She knew he was stuck somewhere, she knew that he was alive! 

She…

As quickly as the blue lion’s connection came, her faucet of devotion was suddenly cut off as Lance’s blood clotted in his wounds. 

No. No no _nonono._

Where was she? Blue had left him. _Again._

In one quick motion, Lance plunged the tile back into his wrist. 

He might have cried out, but the euphoria of Blue’s reappearance drowned out the agony that radiated from the laceration. Endorphins rushed through his mind, setting every nerve ending alight.

This was _wrong,_ a part of him screamed, but wasn’t everything about his situation wrong? With every line of fire and every row of pain, he grew closer and closer to those the drugs suppressed. Fragments of memories all swirling around his vision made him nauseous with vertigo and delight. 

  
  
No, his actions weren't wrong. 

Lance smiled, though it wasn’t out of humour. Blue couldn’t leave him again. As long as he kept mutilating his wrist, she would be forced to stay. 

As the lion loved the lamb, he craved the release as porcelain shards dug into to his skin, penetrating the outer layer of gore and into his fleshy muscle again, and again, and again. Metallic liquid polluted the white pavement, squirting all over his arms and legs. As he cut deeper and deeper the blood flow increased, until blood was spurting from his veins and he couldn’t move his fingers. Lance couldn’t stop a keening whine releasing from his lips, the sound drowned out the intoxicating high of Blue’s reappearance. Not even his lion’s _worrydistresshorror_ could put a stop to the butchering. 

_Wait,_ he yelled, _don’t leave me!_

And as the attendant rushed into the shower, slamming him onto the bloodied ground and wrestling the tile fragment from his maimed hands, Lance cried as their connection started to trickle away again once the haziness returned. He didn’t notice another person rushing in, syringe at the ready to plunge crystal-clear liquid into his neck. He didn’t notice the purple tinge of their skins, the yellow highlights in their sclera.

No matter how much he shrieked for them to get off of him, for the Blue Lion to come back and for his friends that weren’t there, he couldn’t stop the doctors for forcing new drugs syringed into his bloodstream. He couldn’t stop the memories of _pidgehunkshirokeith_ from leaving his mind.

He couldn’t stop his eyes from falling shut.

-

  
When Lance woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he couldn’t move his arms.

The second thing he noticed was that everything around him was white - the padded floors and small cot; the blinding lights and his cotton clothes. 

Yet when he looked down, crimson red seeped through the straightjacket, his arms stained with his blood and washed with his crimes.

Lance screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> :)
> 
> Was Voltron real, or was it all in Lance's head? Find out next time on Total Drama Voltron!
> 
> -
> 
> Ashka, back at it again with the coloured text. idk why I used it again but I think using coloured text to convey the mental links between paladin and lion is neat (insert picture of marge saying 'I just think it's neat' here).
> 
> I'm not a fan of the ending but eh, what can you do.
> 
> 5k words and Lance has next to no dialogue. That was fun to write. This idea come to me randomly at like 3am and I have no idea how I thought of it. This is my first time writing medical whump, so I hope you all enjoyed it!
> 
> -
> 
> Check me out on [my Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ashkazora) And if you can, please leave a kudos/comment if you liked this! Your comments fuel me to write more.
> 
> My BTHB sheet is still open, if anyone would like to request something!


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